Category Archives: Movies

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Jan 24 2012

Extremely Difficult and Incredibly Unnerving

It’s no surprise today to learn that the movie  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.  It has all the right things that a Best Picture nomination should probably have:

Tom Hanks.

Sandra Bullock.

Cute lil boy that reminds us of Haley Joel Osment.

9/11.

You may or may not be surprised to learn that its based on a book by Jonathan Safran Foer, who also wrote Everything is Illuminated, which was a good movie but did not have Sandra Bullock or Tom Hanks in it.  But it did have Elijah Wood if that counts for anything.

Anyway, I started reading ELIC this past Saturday and I am about 60% through it. Half of it is the first person narrative of a young boy named Oskar Schell who lost his father in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  Oskar comes across a key in his father’s belongings which he believes is a clue that is father left for him to something quite extraordinary, so the book becomes Oskar’s adventure in finding out what the key goes to.

The book is written in a bit of stream of consciousness type format, in that almost all of the dialogue between Oskar and anyone else is crammed into one large paragraph, sentence after sentence, making it a bit hard to follow and determine who is saying what if you aren’t paying attention.

Chapters are frequently broken up by random photos which you learn Oskar is taking along the way: a door knob, the back of someone’s head, the front of a house… and then there are random photos that Oskar hasn’t taken but which point your attention to something trivial in the text: a roller coaster, a skeleton’s hand, an elephant’s eye up close.  There’s also a “falling man” picture that repeats itself throughout the book, reminding us that this is a 9/11 story.  By the way, the date has not been mentioned so far in the 60% of the book I’ve read.  You know they are in New York.  Oskar mentions his father was killed in a terrorist attack and mentions visiting Ground Zero, but other than that, the date itself has not been mentioned. I don’t know if that’s important, but I’m sure it was left out intentionally.

Speaking of things being left out, about every other chapter is told from the point of view of Oskar’s grandmother or grandfather. Their chapters are also told in an extreme stream of consciousness narrative…long run on sentences, short choppy sentences, no quotations around dialogue, long paragraphs, no paragraphs… it’s erratic and unorganized and very hard to follow at times.  Much of it appears to be drafts of journal entries that the grandmother has written to her son, Oskar’s father, about how his parents met, etc. The grandfather was a mute sculptor.  At least I think he’s mute, but I don’t really know if he was always mute.  He writes in a notebook a lot when conversing with his wife.  He also leaves her, but comes back later, maybe, I’m not sure…I still have 40% more to read, hopefully I’ll find out.

And hopefully, you get my point. This book is extremely hard to follow.  BUT….buried in it is something that makes me want to finish it instead of throwing it across the room, although I wouldn’t actually throw it because I’m reading it on my Kindle Fire.  Maybe, I’d delete it from the device instead with a smirk on my face.  There!  Take that ELIC!

But I’m going to finish it.  I don’t want to play the 9/11 card and say that’s why I’m reading it.  Sure, seeing the trailers for the movie helped.  It’s definitely meant to tug at our heart strings.  Maybe that’s even why some people don’t want to see the movie or read the book.

Though this is Foer’s 2nd book, his ability to fill a page with banter, but still give his reader those A-ha! moments like some archeologist who just found a femur bone on the last day of a five year expedition is amazing.  I stumble all over my tongue trying to describe this book to someone as I’m reading it, but deep inside, I get it.  Do you hear me Foer?  I get it.  I connect with Oskar as a kid.  I feel sorry for him.  He makes me laugh. He pisses me off.

And that’s probably what a good book should do.  Makes us think about it. Laugh at it. Hate it. Write about it.  But most of all, it makes us remember.  I may not be able to clearly tell anyone what this book is about by the time I finish reading it, but I will remember it.

And in the end, isn’t that what a good book or a good movie or a good person or a good memory deserves?

To be remembered.

Dec 30 2011

Movie Review: Fright Night

While the original version is one of my favorite 80s vampire flicks, you have to appreciate this decent remake because it comes at a perfect time when what we needed from a vampire film today was a good “fright.” There are no lovable shiny vampires here!

Colin Farrell is awesome as the sexy, alluring, and dangerous Jerry. Anton Yelchin is perfect as the geeky hero Charley who gets the girl in the end. Toni Collette, from United States of Tara, does a great job as Charley’s mom. I loved seeing Christopher Charles Mintz-Plasse as the friend, Ed. Fans will recognized him from movies Superbad and Role Models. He plays the same type of geek here as he often has, but gets to shine as a big bad vampire in the end. And fans of the original will certainly recognize Chris Sarandon from the original who makes a cameo appearance.

With its eerie music and “bump in the night” moments to set the tone and make you jump, the movie holds true to the original more than I expected. Special effects were decent and scary as well. Overall, it’s a fun teen flick that gives back what vampire films have definitely been missing this decade.

Dec 29 2011

Movie Review – Rise of the Planet of the Apes

We watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes on Christmas night. I admit I was impressed. I was a bit worried that Hollywood would attempt to cram in too much in this “prequel” but they didn’t.  They addressed the two main concerns that I’m sure all Planet of the Apes fans had on their minds: how do the apes come into power and what happens to the humans. Neither of these was over dramatized, and both were completely believable.

James Franco plays Will Rodman, a doctor who is working on a drug to cure Alzheimer’s. His father, played by John Lithgow, is suffering from it.  Just when experiments on chimps is making great progress, an accident happens and the head of the research facility shuts the lab down. He orders the chimps to be put down, but one of the assistants discovers a baby chimp in one of the cages and sends it home with Will. Will continues to develop the drug and to track the baby chimp’s intelligence, which was passed on from his mother. Will names the baby Caesar.

Three years later Will’s father is improving because he’s been given the drug, but he soon begins to lapse because his immune system starts to fight off the virus.  Will talks the research facility into trying a new strain of virus, but when one doctor is exposed to it we soon learn that the new virus is harmful to humans.  Meanwhile, Caesar is shipped off to a primate facility after an accident involving a neighbor, where he meets other chimps for the first time and his army is soon formed.

Once these two story lines are set up, there’s a good thirty minutes of nonstop action as the primates plan and carry out their escape. Before you know it, the movie is over!  But like I said before, it isn’t pushed too far and the ending was quite satisfying to me.  My only complaint about the movie is that the CGI effects with Caesar in some places is a bit fake looking, but most of the time it looks great.  I’m sure they pushed their limits here in order to give Caesar those closer-to-human qualities and emotions, which actually do tug at your heart strings as they were probably intended to do.

Lots of emotion!  Lots of action!  A very satisfying story which is exactly what Apes finally needed on the big screen!

Dec 13 2011

Bag of Bones A&E Movie Review

How many of you watched Stephen King’s Bag of Bones on A&E this past Sunday and Monday night?  If you follow my blog here, you know I read this book earlier this year.  Read my book review here.

Having  read the book just a few months ago, I was anxious to see this movie adaptation of it.  Unfortunately, I don’t have many good things to say about it.  It obviously suffered from a poor script and low budget.

First, I loved the two King references in Part 1.  Mike Noonan’s wife mentioned Annie Wilkes (Misery) and his agent mentioned a new Bachman book.  King fans love those little nuances.  I kept looking for King himself to make an appearance, as he often does in his films, but I didn’t see him. 

King’s larger books do a great job of really getting the reader absorbed in the lives of the characters and their relationships with other characters around them. Sadly, that is often lost on the screen. Much of this book evolves around Noonan’s new relationship with Mattie and Kyra.  In the movie, Noonan didn’t even go to Mattie’s house until deep into Part 2. 

For the sake of the film, I knew this was pushed along a big quickly but it still would have been nicer to see their relationship bloom just a bit more before what happened to Mattie. For this reason alone, I felt Part 1 was a bit slow in developing crucial plot lines.

Sure, the movie had it’s “spooky” moments, many of which were liberties taken by the writers or directors and which strayed from the book.  Other more important elements from the book did make it into the film which I had expected to be cut – the owls, the fridge magnets, and the green lady tree mainly.

Max Devore wasn’t as creepy as I would have liked, but it was still a decent preformance. His female sidekick and love interest, Rogette, upstaged him a bit though and was just as weird and peculiar in the film as she is in the book.  His relationship with Kyra wasn’t even mentioned in the film unlike the book as well.

I was also disappointed with the way Sara Tidwell was approached early on in Part 1.  The importance of her really wasn’t even revealed until Part 2, so at least it was wrapped up.  But for those unfamiliar with the book, one of whom was watching with me, there probably was difficulty grasping what was happening and why.  I loved the performance of Sara though and thought the music was one aspect the movie got right!

In the end, I agree with Entertainment Weekly’s Stephan Lee who thought Part One wasn’t all that it could have been, saying: “The pacing was too relaxed, and the scares were based more on “boo” factor than psychological drama — but it’s enough to bring me back for Part 2, if mostly out of curiosity.”

 

Nov 27 2011

Movie Review: Super 8 Not Super Gr8 but Not Super Bad Either

I admit I didn’t like Super 8 after first watching it.  With Spielberg leading production, I constantly compared it to ET, and you probably will too.  There are several similarities.  We have a group of coming-of- age kids relating to one another with problems of their own while also trying to help an alien get home.  The only two things missing are a memorable music score and a cutesy alien that can talk.  But comparing the two is indeed unfair.

The movie centers around a group of kids making their own zombie film.  They end up witnessing an air force train getting derailed, and their camera captures a strange creature escaping from the train. Soon, the air force is in town taking command while the electricity is going out because all the powerlines have been stolen. All the dogs in the town have also disappeared, along with the motor engines in all the cars.

An innocent bond forms between two of the kids, Joe and Alice, who are both motherless.  But their fathers frown upon it because of a horrible tragedy from their past that one blames the other for.  Joe Courtney and Elle Fanning shine here as Joe and Alice.  I’m a huge fan of Elle’s sister, Dakota, and Elle definitely holds her own here. The other kids in the bunch also provide a fair amount of comedic relief, almost in a Stand By Me style. Gabriel Basso is one of them who I was happy to see because I have really enjoyed his character on Showtime’s The Big C.

The movie captures the late 70s perfectly, particularly with music – the kids singing My Sharona – and a few baby boomers might recognize their beloved cars of the era.  My only complaint of the film is the glaring blue light that appears throughout, not just in the alien scenes.  I know part of that was the director’s homage to the film that gives the movie its name, and it also appears to be a dated trait to movies, but at times it was often too distracting.  Other than that, this is a nice little underated film that I have come to appreciate more since I first watched it.

Definitely worth a look, not just for Spielberg fans, but those who appreciate a little action and Sci Fi with a nice touch of sentiment with focus on child actors being portrayed in a positive sense.

Nov 20 2011

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

If you ever needed proof why you shouldn’t listen to critics, the Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, part 4 in the series, is it.  Part 2 and part 3 received quite a thrashing from critics despite still cashing in pretty big at the box office.  So, there’s no reason why they would treat part 4 any different.  But that’s just it.  It is different. Without Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, whom you won’t even miss having in this film, you should expect a new storyline and new characters and that’s exactly what you get.  Barbossa and Gibbs are back, but other than Captain Jack, Jack the Monkey, and even a cameo from Jack’s father (Keith Richards), you have a whole new cast of characters.

The film picks up with the same plot where the last one left off, with the Fountain of Youth being the focus.  Captain Jack escapes the gallows with Gibbs only to discover someone is impersonating him and getting a crew together to go find the fountain. The imposter turns out to be Angelica Teach (Penelope Cruz), the daughter of Blackbeard (Ian McShane) who wants to find the fountain to save her father from a doomed prophecy.

Angelica and Jack apparently have a past love interest together and she tricks him into joining the crew because she knows he has the map and that he’s been to the fountain.  But to get the spell of the fountain to work, they’ll have to collect certain items that are needed, including the tear of a mermaid.  So, the movie becomes a race for Blackbeard’s crew, the Spanish, and the English, to collect the items needed and get to the fountain first!

Blackbeard is a colorful and well played evil pirate.  You can expect the same entertainment that you got from Davy Jones and Barbossa in the previous films.  Cruz definitely holds her own in the cast of men.  Depp is Jack through and through, prancing about and always cleverly escaping trouble.  And Geoffrey Rush as Barbossa again is up to his old conniving tricks, undercover on the English side,  despite having a peg leg now.

The movie provides lots of fast paced action mainly in the form of sword fights and doesn’t rely heavily on special effects like the last film. And then there are the mermaids!  The intense and evil beauties which provide a large part of entertainment in the middle of the film, and even a small romantic subplot that grabs your attention.

There’s an equal amount of time spent on land and at sea, and although the movie had a slow start as it set up the plot, I would almost say this one was better than the last one. If you are a fan of the other films, you will definitely be entertained and think that this film is a great addition to the series.

Oct 26 2011

My BHFE! Best Horror Films Ever

So time is running out to get your heart beat racing and the blood in your veins pumping overtime!  Halloween is just 5 days away and by this time of year, I am always looking forward to scary movies on television but usually end up watching ghost story reruns on the Travel Channel or the ten millionth episodes of Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures, and whatever other ghost hunter has a “reality” show on TV these days.

Back in the day, I loved a Halloween weekend sleepover with a couple of friends which included a trip to the movie rental store where we picked out a few movies we’d never seen before.  I remember a certain one called Sleepaway Camp that still disturbs me when I think about it to this day.

When I was older and spending Halloween at home alone passing out candy, I’d watch reruns of Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th.  I still remember how good those Freddie movies were, especially part 2 or 3 with the wayward kids in that home.  Freddie using that one kid’s veins to walk him down the hall like a puppet was just creepy!

I loved all the Psycho films too, except for the remake with Vince Vaughn.  One of my favorites is the prequel where Norman is on the phone with the talk radio show host throughout most of the film.  Speaking of Hitchcock, let’s not forget The Birds or Rebecca.  I’ve seen Rebecca only once.  It never comes on TV anymore!!  It’s been on my mind all this month and I’m tempted to just break down and buy it already.  J has never seen it.  It’s such a classic!

Let’s not forget all the great Stephen King films – Pet Sematary, It, The Shining, Carrie, Cujo, Creepshow.  I watched Pet Sematary again just a few weeks ago when I caught in on TV.  It’s not a very good film as far as the acting goes, but was definitely scary.  Gage, after he comes back from the grave, killing Herman Munster with Daddy’s scalpel was definitely scary!

These days “scary” films that grab my attention are more mental and less horror.  I care less for films like Saw and Hostel and the remakes of  Texas Chainsaw that showcase all the blood and gore.  Give me a good thriller like Six Sense, The Grudge, Let the Right One End, or The Ring anyday. That dead girl crawling out of the TV set was wicked the first time I saw it.  But that’s the bad thing about these films sometimes…see them once and all the mystique is gone after that.  We know how it ends and can never really have that thrill again.  But…that’s the sign of a good film, is it not?  And let’s not forget that even The Grudge, Let The Right One, and The Ring were remakes of foreign films.

I don’t consider them horror either but Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon are still two of my top two thrillers of all time. As far as something a big darker, I love all of the Underworld films and can’t wait for the new one next year.

So what do you prefer?  Do you like your Halloween flicks with a bit of monster and mayhem or more blood and guts and stuff?

Oct 21 2011

You’ve Got Mail

Wednesday night while the “world” was watching game one of the World Series, I was watching the 1998 movie You’ve Got Mail.  It’s an old favorite of mine, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. 

For me, it really captures a time in my life when I was first introduced to the internet somewhere around 1997.  I took a computer class in college around that time, but was restricted to the limitations of university email and password coded computer access.  A new roommate around that time introduced me to AOL 4.0 on his home computer, set me up with an email account of my own, and the rest is history I guess if you can consider 14 years ago as being that historical.

I spent most of my online beginnings, like everyone else around that time, in local chatrooms.  When AOL would crash, I would troll the magazine section in bookstores for those free installation disks. Sometimes I miss those all too familiar sounds of dial up connecting to the internet and of course, those infamous three little words…You’ve Got Mail.  I don’t miss the slow connection though!

As for the movie, it also holds a dear place in my heart because it’s about books and bookstores and reflects a war that’s still going on even today as tiny little bookstores strive to stay above water while the big bag internet with its cheap discounts and free shipping is forcing them out of business.

I sometimes miss those online anonymous connections I had back in the day with various strangers who I assumed were being truthful about who they were.  But people loved to chat. 

Not anymore. 

We’re too busy texting and Facebooking to be chatting these days. And if we are chatting, we’re all looking to hook up these days.  Sure, back then people often took it off line and met with sexual intentions, but I remember a few quality dates that stemmed from AOL chatrooms where sex wasn’t the way the night ended.

Sadly, I find it’s harder to connect with people these days at all, even online.  We’ve cocooned ourselves, and built Firwalls around our computers because we are afraid of serial killers, internet predators, and identity thieves. The one thing, the computer, that was supposed to connect us has torn us apart even more and made us more afraid to connect with anyone.  So instead, we all sit at home on our computers alone, playing Farmville and thinking of savvy comments to make on Facebook so our friends will “like” us.

Like Kathleen Kelly says in the movie when she is in a restaurant with Frank and they realize they don’t love each other anymore, “There is the dream of someone.”  I dream of the time when writing letters was in fashion and personal ads in the classifieds were fun.

And sure, email came along and made it even easier to find those secretive connections, but for what it’s worth, it also made it worse.  Heck, we can’t even embrace capital letters and proper punctuation these days.  We’re too busy driving and texting to worry about good grammar. 

We are too busy. 

Too busy too connect despite being so eagerly dependent upon the very technology that connects all of us in the first place.  We get all our bills paperless now because we want to save trees, but instead we are killing the U.S. Postal Service.

Even Twitter makes us narrow down what we have to say to 140 characters or less.

If things are this fast now, so fast that we don’t have time to write a letter and mail it, much less text or tweet a complete sentence, where will we be in another 17 years?  Will they even teach capitalizaton and cursive writing (or writing at all?) in public schools?  Or will they teach emoticons and proper abbreviations instead?  WTF!

And how will the generation of tomorrow get laid find meaningful and exciting relationships like Joe and Kathleen in You’ve Got Mail?  Chatrooms and Craigs List will be long gone by then. 

I don’t know the answers to my questions, but I weep for the generation that has to find out.  I weep for my generation, because even those days for us are almost over.

Sep 12 2011

X-Men: First Class ~ Movie Review

Though Bryan Singer put his stamp on this movie as an Executive Producer, it’s Matthew Vaughn the director (2010′s Kick-Ass) who deserves every bit of credit for breathing new life into the X-men comics with this outstanding “First Class” prequel which takes us back to when Charles Xavier could walk and the X-Men were first coming together.  Magneto and Xavier team up as best friends to combat Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) who is pushing for World War III during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Shaw was also responsible for killing Magneto’s mother during the holocaust , so Magneto is out for personal revenge.

Unlike the other films, this one doesn’t suffer from an over the top cast all seeking to hog camera time. We have a smaller concentration of mutants to get wrapped up in and to care about.  Xavier and Raven (Mystique) are growing up as best friends. We meet Hank McCoy (pre-Beast) as a scientist working on Cerebro.  Xavier uses it to seek out and recruit other mutants: Darwin, Angel, Havok, and Banshee. Meanwhile, Shaw already has his own team: Riptide, Azazel, and Emma Frost.

Though Bacon was probably my least favorite character as Shaw, his scenes definitely have that 60ish Austin Power feel to them, complete with the ascots which Shaw liked to wear in the comics. His team of mutants are much more interesting and definitely upstage him. Emma Frost was superb!

But unlike the earlier films, we actually get to invest in all of the mutants here along with their storylines which have equal screen time.  We see Raven and Xavier as friends.  Raven and McCoy becoming interested in each other as McCoy seeks out a way to hide their deformities.  We see Xavier caring for Erik’s well-being, but Erik falling closer to evil.  And most of all, we see the other younger mutants giving themselves nicknames and learning from Professor X how to control their powers. Fans of the early films will enjoy seeing cameos by Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Romijn, which made for a nice tie in.

I loved the music throughout which gave the movie a real hip and upbeat feel.  Special effects were amazing.  And as I said before, I didn’t feel any of the mutants really upstaged each other.  It was an all around great cast and a great depiction of the early comics, complete with yellow jumpsuits!

 

 

Jul 13 2011

Beastly: Movie Review

Kyle is hot, rich, and self centered.  And these are the perfect qualities in his eyes for being class president.  Kyle gets a wake-up call though when he teases a witch-like girl in his class and she puts a spell on him, turning him into a scarred, tattooed freak.

He has one year to get a girl to genuinely tell him she loves him or he will be cursed with bad looks forever.Kyle goes into hiding and while trying to win over the girl that his heart really yearns for, he also learns a thing or two about inner beauty.

Yeah, it’s a take on the old Beauty and the Beast story, but it works.  I really enjoyed this one.  Alex Pettyfer plays Kyle.  You might recognize him as the lead from I Am Number Four.  He’s good eye candy.  Even when he was the tatted up bald beast, he’s still pretty hot.  Mary-Kate Olsen plays Kendra, the witch, and even she was pretty decent and looked great. Vanessa Hudgens plays Lindy, the girl that Kyle falls for.  She wasn’t bad either.

I really appreciated her character’s back story more than anything.  Her father is a druggie and kills a dealer to save her.  She goes into hiding at Kyle’s house for protection and this is how she gets to know him, though she doesn’t know its really Kyle from her school, a guy that she didn’t really know very well outside is pompous showman attitude.

The real surprise is Neal Patrick Harris, who plays Kyle’s blind tutor.  He offers up quite a bit of humor and since he can’t judge Kyle by his looks, he teaches Kyle that he shouldn’t judge himself in that manner either.

Kyle’s father is a popular news anchor and just as stuck up as his son.  When Kyle becomes cursed, he tucks Kyle away in a penthouse in the city.  It becomes obvious that his father is ashamed of him since he keeps canceling plans with him.  The father quickly falls out of the storyline all together as Kyle concentrates instead on breaking the curse by getting Lindy to love him.  This father/son storyline was probably the weakest part of the movie, and I didn’t really are that it didn’t get wrapped up in the end.

A touch of love.  A touch of whimsey.  Heart. Emotion.  Romance.  The movie has a touch of it all. Its definitely a chick flick though, but good ahem, exposure for Mr. Pettyfer which ain’t bad either!

Even when I'm ugly, I'm hot!